Report

social e-mails

Student; Sophie van de Wouw, B1.2Coach; G.W.M. Rauterberg

table of contentAbstract My Business E-mail pt.1Introduction My Business E-mail pt.2Research My Business E-mail pt.3Letter vs Mail pt.1 Direction pt.1Letter vs Mail pt.2 Direction pt.2Letter vs Mail pt.3 RequirementsSocial Communities pt.1 So-Box pt.1Social Communities pt.2 So-Box pt.2User Test So-Box pt.3E-mail Diary So-Box pt.4My Personal E-mail pt.1 ConclusionMy Personal E-mail pt.2 List of Literature

abstractThe aim of the project is to make e-mailing more fun and personal, and less a burden to read and to respond to. I started my design process with re-search on e-mail and other forms of communica-tion in general. I then thought of a clear direction to narrow down the big subject and – by analyzing the research, which you can see by looking at the underlined parts of the research – set up require-ments. This time, the brainstorming phase went a bit different than I’m used to. Instead of coming up with thousands of ideas and then pickingonly three, I really studied the requirements and came up with a device which included these require-ments immediately, which I of course improved and changed multiple times. The end result is the So-Box, a four centimeters big cube in which all the good qualities of e-mail, writing, text messag-ing and social communities are combined, which makes e-mailing more personal but very effortless at the same time.

introductionModern life is filled with interruptions by e-mail. Whether you get an overload of spam, an annoy-ing colleague mailing or when you need to waste time on sending a long e-mail to that foreign friend, e-mail is often more of a burden than a fun com-munication form. You never get a pause from the internet; e-mails arrive day and night. Sending an e-mail is very easy, costless and you usually do not have to pay a lot of attention when quickly writing an e-mail. In the old days we used to write each other letters. People took the time to carefully pick out paper, paid attention to their handwriting and even a nice scent was nothing unusual. When you got a letter you felt warm and special. Letters were and still are very personal, so the feeling they give the receiver is much more special than when quickly sending an e-mail. How do we make receivers get that same special feeling, without a sender having to spend lots of time in his or hers busy life?

researchBecause neither of us had a deep understanding of the word communication yet, we decided to spend a relatively big amount of time on research. The first three weeks were based on getting lots of basic information about e-mailing and communi-cation in general. We also did a usertest, had an expert meeting and kept an e-mail diary.

We wanted to use the time we had as efficient as possible so even though this project was supposed to be an individual project, we all decided to work together during the research phase. This way, we could compare the results we would get and share the knowledge we would gather during this phase.

letter vs mail pt.1The first thing I started off with when thinking about the subject, was to make a list of differences be-tween e-mail and letters. By doing this, highlights of both ways of communication would be clear and I could use advantages of both parties.

The most important thing that came out of the this research was the fact that letters are much more personal than e-mails. When writing a letter you pay attention to the handwriting, the paper and perhaps stickers or perfume. You spend more time when you’re carefully writing a personal letter, than when you’re quickly writing an e-mail to a friend. Therefore letters usually have a bigger meaning for the reader; people are excited to open a letter, while e-mails are often a burden to read. Besides that, letters are physical while emails are just “some pixels on a screen”. On the other hand, the main advantage of e-mails is the fact that it’s free, perfect to keep and very easy and effortless. E-mails are also very quick, both to send and to receive a reply back.

letter vs mail pt.2Because I got very interested in the relation between writing and e-mailing, I rented some books about the two subjects to get a deeper understanding. I also read about other forms of communication I found worth doing some research on.

Writing is a way to save information and give it to others in another time or space. Writing begun be-cause of the need to register things or record im-portant happenings. E-mails are special because of the fact that you’re able to send not only text, but also sound fragments and video footage to everywhere in the world. You also receive emails back in case the address doesn’t exist, so letters are never ‘missing’. Besides that, the address itself is generally easier and the text more clear and structural. You can forward an e-mail without having to re-write the whole letter and you can easily reply. Other files are easily ad-justable and sendable with the help of emailing.

letter vs mail pt.3In addition, there are other ways of communication that we need to take into account. Lots of young-sters communicate through text messages, which is a very mobile and easy way to shortly say some-thing small or make a quick appointment. Another common communication object is of course the phone; a more personal way of mobile communi-cation. Besides that, the TV and the Radio are also indirect ways of communication.

social communities pt.1My teammate did a bit of research on one of the now most used communicationforms between youngsters; social communities like Hyves and Fa-cebook. After reading his paper I got very interest-ed in combining the aspects of these communities with the advantages of email and writing, which is to be seen in my requirements.

At this moment e-mail is competing with social me-dia. These social media are getting more and more popular. A reason for this is the comment feature of - for example - Facebook, as it previews the mes-sage and the content, in contrary to e-mail. A re-search question these days is how to combine e-mail with social media to make it more personal. This includes a better way to separate private mail from business mail. One example of this is under devel-opment of Microsoft. They develop an add-on for Outlook which allows you to dynamically change the interface, creating a more personal mailbox.

social communities pt.2There is also the possibility that Outlook changes it for you by analyzing your mails and friend network, providing an easier and more special feeling to the user.A major problem with e-mail is the cybercrimes it brings. As people grow more used to a more elec-tronic environment, more spammers and other criminals emerge on the internet. As it is becom-ing nigh impossible for governments to counteracts these crimes, it has become another focus point of the developers in their social e-mail research for the easier separation between types of mail.It is expected though that even when with social media getting more popular, e-mail will always be used.

user testTo get to know the avarage e-mailing behaviour of an everyday person, we set up a usertest which we sent to a large variety of people. 38 people re-sponded, of which 19 men and 19 women with an age variating from 16 to 51.

The highlights from this test were that 36 of the 38 people have a private e-mailadress they use on an everyday basis. The average of received mails per week is 38 and the average of sent e-mails is 17 per week. Most people (18) check their e-mail a few times a day, while 9 people have their e-mail window open at all times. 50 percent of the ques-tioned people doesn’t read all their e-mails after it has been filtered by a spamfilter.

e-mail diaryAfter these basic facts, Aga Matysiak recommend-ed us to write down all the e-mails we got, the feel-ings we got when reading the e-mail and how we responded. In other words; we had to write an e-mail diary. For three days I wrote down all my emo-tions in detail when I got or sent an e-mail, which – when reading it after – gave me lots of great ideas. This thus has been very helpful to me. I divided the diary between personal and business mail because I assumed there would be a great difference in emotional value.

my personal e-mail pt.1_My friend Mark messages me on Hyves, asking me how my party on Saturday was and that it’s almost my birthday. I’m happy that he remembered my birthday, but at the same time I feel forced to re-spond. I send him a message back and secretly hope that we won’t start a big comment chain._A Spanish internet buddy sends me a message on facebook, also wishing me a happy birthday. I again don’t want to spend too much time messag-ing him back, so I just send him a quick “thanks!”._Another Hyves message from Mark. I send him a short message back. At least sending messages via hyves is fast and effortless, otherwise I would prob-ably not send anything back so soon, or not at all._A spammail from Zero Condoms. I once signed up for their products, but I usually throw their mails away without even reading the subject. I always feel a bit disappointed when I get a new e-mail and it appears to be spam.

my personal e-mail pt.2_I haven’t replied on two e-mails I got a few days ago from two American friends. We had contact through e-mail but the mails are often very long and sending a reply just takes time. I feel a bit guilty and don’t want to make them feel I’m ignoring them, but on the other hand I don’t want to waste time mailing them every day._Studentenwerk mailed me about a new vacan-cy opening up. These mails make me excited be-cause I’m often looking for new job opportunities. Unfortunately I didn’t like this job so I read the mail and threw it away._An e-mail from Direct Wonen. I consider it as spam so I threw it away without even opening it._An e-mail from MSN. I again consider this as spam so I throw it away. It gets me irritated and disap-pointed when I have only two new mails and they both appear to be spam._An e-mail from woningaanbod; another e-mailser-vice I once signed up for but now hardly ever read. It takes too much effort to cancel

my business e-mail pt.1_I Got two mails about a meeting. Different dates were proposed and I just let them decide because the mail will get unclear with five people proposing different times and dates._Got two mails about an assignment. I got a bit pissed because they keep ignoring my e-mails (I requested files they were supposed to mail weeks ago). I don’t want to get too demanding, but I also just want those files. Now finally after five days they sent their stuff. Would be nice if they would send it before._Four other mails about the meeting I was talking about earlier, and it’s one big mess with no one un-derstanding any of it. I still don’t respond and just wait until the rest cleans up their mess._I sent a mail with a homework assignment and the notification that I won’t be able to be present at to-morrows class. I hope they won’t be mad and they won’t think I’m just taking the easy way out.

my business e-mail pt.2_Sent an e-mail to Eurekacup, saying I’m interest-ed in working for them. I hope my mail is decent enough. I sent the same mail two weeks ago, but after checking my undelivered mail just now I real-ized that the mail hasn’t been sent yet. The other mail arrived just in time, but I kinda lost my trust in emailing._Mail from Brombacher about deliverables. It’s just an interesting mail I read and threw away after._An e-mail from Roestenburg about a lecture. I keep getting these mails from him and they get annoy-ing. I’m not interested at all in the lectures he keeps e-mailing everyone about and I definitely consider them to be spam. I usually throw them away right away._A mail from Jelle. He hasn’t been responding to any of the groups mails for weeks, and now he fi-nally sends us an e-mail. Even though he is apolo-gizing, I’m still mad.

my business e-mail pt.3_Eurekacup send me an e-mail saying they appre-ciate my help. I really like mails that comfirm things I’ve been looking forward to. It gives me an impor-tant signal which is often missing._Shoumacher mails me about a meeting. Again, the meeting has nothing to do with me so I throw the mail away, considering it spam._Got an e-mail about the meeting. They finally made up their mind and decided. I really like it fi-nally being set._A reminder about a meeting. I’m confused be-cause I’m not sure if the meeting is mandatory, so a bit more clearness would be appreciated. Be-sides that, the time I read the e-mail the meeting has already started. It would be nice if they would send emails a bit more earlier or make it high prior-ity when sent late.

direction pt.1During the third week, we set up a meeting with Aga Matysiak. She has made a project which in-volved mailing in an office environment and also did research for this. We asked her to be our client and she responded very positive. Because we all were a bit confused about the direction we wanted to head to, she gave us some great advice which really helped us choosing a subject we wanted to design in.

She first told us there were two main options; mak-ing e-mail communication social or making social e-mails. She also told us that motivating people to e-mail less and have more, for example, personal contact is useless. People have a different purpose per communication type and they pick the most appropriate.

direction pt.2There is a big problem with e-mails because you often misunderstand things said and there is a lack of signals. When you, for example, sent an e-mail and you don’t immediately get a reply, you might worry about the receiver loosing the e-mail or for-getting to read it while the receiver may be just thinking about an appropriate answer. How do you give light signals that notify a sender of these con-cerns? The “facebook poke” (used to let people know you’re still alive and to make people remem-ber you) is a nice idea to use for e-mailing. She then gave us the advice to shortly write a per-sonal problem description, which would show the direction each of us was heading to very quickly. I wrote down “Receiving a letter is often a joy, receiv-ing an e-mail is often a burden. How do we make emails just as personal and fun as a carefully writ-ten letter?” which perfectly cleared up my troubles with finding a good direction.

requirements After I wrote down all the research, I tried to highlight things that I found very interesting or important. After I did this, I quickly realized that I in fact wrote down requirements for the concept I later designed. Like I said before, I handled the Idea Generation a bit different within this project. Instead of coming up with hundreds of quick idea’s, I really analyzed the requirements I carefully came up with, with help of the long research I had done. By doing this, I almost immediately came up with my final concept. Of course this concept needed some tweaking and improving, but the basic idea got made up after combining the following requirements.

_More personal _Easy to keep_Effortless _Mobile_Bigger meaning than text _Fun_Physical _Clear_No more misunderstandings

so-box pt.1After setting and combining all the requirements, I – of course improved and changed thousands of times – came up with the So-Box. The So-Box (Social Box) is a 4cm big cube in which all the good quali-ties of writing, emailing, text messaging and social communities are combined into a small, simple and mobile box. The So-Box has the form of a dice and contains four screens and two speakers. Each screen gives you very simple information that is ef-fortless to respond to. You start the device by just holding it. You can then check the different screens for new messages or easily tap a friend in the list dis-played on the other side of the cube which will make the So-Box immediately start recording a quick but personal video message. Small interactions, such as sending the recorded message and turning the device on/off – are done by simply shaking the So-box. I’ve added the idea of “samba balls”, to make this obvious to the user. In order to make the device send and receive e-mails, you register the device and pay a monthly fee comparable to the use of internet on your mobile phone.

so-box pt.2I chose to make a physical solution to the problem rather than software. This because – concluded from the research I did on the differences between mail and e-mail – the physical aspect of a letter is one of the main things that make a letter as special as it is. One of the main requirements was to make the device easy and quick. Therefore, clicking a friend in the list will automatically makes the re-corder start, which is displayed on one of the other screens. The advantage of this way of messaging is that you’re not de-motivated to reply or to mail a friend because it’s fun and literally done in 10 sec-onds, which is the reason why communities as Twit-ter and Facebook are as popular. I chose for video instead of text because I think actually seeing the person messaging you is a lot more personal than some pixels on a screen. Also, signals the sender give to the receiver are easily picked up when seeing the sender and his emotions, instead of just hearing him or seeing his text. Of course receiving and sending video messages is also more fun and opens a lot of new possibilities within messaging.

so-box pt.3

so-box pt.4

conclusionIn the introduction I stated a very important ques-tion that needs to be answered in order to come up with a good solution; “how do we make e-mail more personal and fun, without spending a lot of time”.

During the research I realized that there are four very popular ways of communicating; e-mailing, writing, text messaging and social communities like Facebook or Twitter. These forms all have their pros and cons. After doing a usertest and writing an e-mail diary I quickly discovered what aspects of these forms of communication were helpful for solving my problem. Writing makes receiving more special because of the personal way of sending a letter, text messaging is popular because of its mo-bile way of communicating and social communi-ties are used because it’s a great way to make a fast appointment or say hi in a very effortless way. I combined these aspects together and formed the So-Box, which is the solution to the problem I stated in the introduction.

list of literatureWebsites_online.wsj.com readwriteweb.commashable.com research.microsoft.comfastcompany.com blog.jonudell.netreadwriteweb.com informatics.sussex.ac.uk

Literature_Communicatie, Steve Parker, 2001Cyber Space, David Jefferis, 2001Telecommunicatie, Chris Oxlade, 2000Het Internet, Robert Snedden, 2001Schrift, Karen Brookfield, 2002